The 17-year-old Mexican-American artist from outside Chicago Adan Diaz’s music journey started because of the pandemic. He downloaded a cracked version of a music software and began to playfully experiment, trying out a whole number of things; rapping, singing in Spanish, electronic flourishes, samples from around his kitchen, you get the idea. All of this fun during one of the most bizarre events in modern history lead to him developing a sound that channelled all his emotions over the last year or so. Boredom, uncertainty, frustration, desperation, lovesickness, all of this is discussed through his own eyes as he goes through the torrents of a modern teenager living in turbulent times, and damn is it good.

Legroom is like the 80’s group Orange Juice fused together with the laidback melodies of mac demarco, fantastic vibes all around that you can’t help but bop your head along to. He opens up as he confesses his feelings of loneliness, not wanting close friends to leave his house and instead stay the night so they can be together, a feeling that, as previously mentioned, the pandemic really brought on for a lot of people both young and old. You can hear the yearning in his vocal, the little crying moments that give you flashbacks to moments you’ve felt like that with close friends. Those moments you’d give everything to relive and give even more to last a bit longer than they originally did. A woozy production capturing the free-willingness of youth, a emotionally intuitive vocal and honest lyrics to tie it all together, Adan Diaz is a pandemic must listen.